I've got a dinner party tonight with my girlfriend, an acquaintance of hers, and the acquaintance's partner. I knew the grocery store in town wouldn't have some of the stuff I wanted, so I drove the 25 minutes to the big one, figuring if I got there early it wouldn't be packed.
I was right.
But when I got all my shit and went to pay, there was only one register open. A quick glance said there was just one middle-full cart in the middle of being processed, and a lady behind that having a great day already, 8AM and standing in line with diapers, tampons, ice cream, and a bottle of wine, standing very still with her eyes closed.
I posted up to wait my turn and watched the cashier wrestle with the machine while she took care of the old couple in the middle of checking out. The old man was wearing his finest VA loungewear - a VIET NAM VETERAN hat with the real thick embroidery all over, and a KILL 'EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THE BODIES sweatshirt, the one with the skull wearing a green beret and clutching a knife in its teeth.
I got a good load of the old guy and mentally rolled my eyes so far back that they spun around like a billiard ball at the end of a trick shot. Ain't no Applebees around here to get a free Kids Meal on Veterans Day, so I guess the grocery store was the spot to hit.
When the cashier finally finished scanning and yelling at the machine to make it cough up a total, asked if they wanted to redeem their points ("Yes please," says the old lady), asked if they wanted to round up for charity, the old man says "What's that? I didn't catch that."
"Would you like to round up for this month's charity? It's for Disabled American Veterans."
Ohhhhhh fuck, I thought, here we go.
And I was right. The old guy perks right up and starts in talking about The Nam. He's got every single story you ever heard about The Nam and they're every bit as well rehearsed as the pitch deck delivered by the bus stop crypto-Illuminati or an old fashioned street mooch.
"I tell you what, when we came back on that plane, they were waiting for us, lined up on both sides of the stairs off the airplane, with their rotten tomatoes and God knows what else, just yelling and screaming and throwing the stuff. I tell you, they ruined my brand new dress uniform, which was expensive especially with what we were getting paid back then, but I was just so happy to be home that I smiled at them."
Two, three, four more of these cookie cutter movie scenes, these descriptions of how a poorly informed but credulous person might imagine things to have been, and I'm doing my best to just laugh inside. Whatever, you know? Just what the fuck ever.
"Happy Veterans Day, you dumb bastard," I say to myself, almost letting a giggle escape. "Embrace your fate."
But it goes on and on, and eventually I look down at my watch and tune out because I'm curious how long, actually, this guy is going to clog the place up before he either runs out of gas or the cashier gets up the nuts to interrupt a saint on his own feast day, and ask him to get the fuck out of the way.
I got to four minutes give or take, hearing the old guy drone with the occasional mumble from the cashier, some question about a discount, some kind of mumbling from the old man, and then another rip into some patter. I got to five on the clock and tuned back in, just in time for him to say some shit that stopped the internal laughter.
"I tell you what, the military these days doesn't know how to win a war anymore. It's just like in football, these kids all expect a participation trophy for just showing up, no matter how they played. The way they run things these days has really gone right down the tubes."
No mother fucking way is anyone who did time in The Nam going to pop off with some shit like that, casually, in public, to a fucking grocery store cashier. And you know what? If they are, then fuck 'em, cause if they're going to send out that kind of outgoing, they better be prepared for incoming.
I opened my mouth and realized my fists were clenched and I had already decided where to drop my eco-friendly shopping bag so it would be clear of my feet for the shuffle up to get up in eye blackening range, so I closed my mouth, took a deep breath, and decided that there was no way I wasn't going to say something but that I needed to keep a veneer of civility.
"Excuse me, sir?"
He looked over at me, and so did the old lady and the cashier.
The lady in front of me didn't even open her eyes.
"Could you please settle up? There's only one register open and there are people in line." I gestured behind me to the two others who had joined the queue while he was flapping his gums.
He paused for a moment and then seized the throne of indignity that he felt was his right.
"See here? This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, people these days don't have any appreciation at all for the sacri-"
And I'd, very suddenly, had more than enough and I cut him right off.
I said, "Listen old timer, how about you meet me down at the VFW after this and we can swap war stories all day, assuming you even have the dirt time to get you in the fucking door."
He looked at me real hard for just a second, and then swiped his card and took the receipt without another word.
The woman in front of me finally opened her eyes to pay and left.
The cashier said something about the cash register, apologized, and pulled the scanner out of the counter to jiggle with some connection or other.
"It's been acting up all day, we're not sure when it's going to get fixed, I'm sorry for the delay."
"No worries," I said, happy to stand there all mother fucking day without having to listen to the dipshit jawjacking.
She laser beamed my groceries and asked for my rewards card, telling me I had a hundred million gas points, or whatever, saved up.
"Are you by any chance a veteran?"
"Yeah," I said, stuffing dinner back into the tote.
"We're giving 11% off the total before the discount card, if you have your veteran card?"
"Well shit," I said, "Yeah, I have my driver license with the little logo on it."
"That will work," she said, taking a quick look and zapping twenty bucks off my total.
I can do without the yellow ribbon stickers and the "Thank you for your service", but putting twenty bucks in my hand? I'm not upset about that in the slightest.
"You know," she said, "My dad was in the Army in Vietnam."
"Right on," I said.
"Well, I can't imagine my dad ever talking like that about it. And you know what else, that gentleman who was just in here, he didn't have any veteran ID even though he asked for the discount."
Absolutely unsurprised, and yet amused, I finished bagging up my shit and blew the twenty bucks I saved on malt liquor at the getting spot on the way home.
Happy Veterans Day.